We invite you to come and explore! The Santa Cruz Mountains wine region is nestled in one of the most unique natural environments in the world. With its mountainous terrain, marine and valley influences, varied micro-climates, and diverse soils the Santa Cruz Mountains offers our vintners the ideal place to grow high quality grapes and to produce some of the world’s most distinct and terroir driven wines.

The Santa Cruz Mountains Appellation encompasses more than 850 square miles beginning from San Francisco down the Peninsula to Silicon Valley and Gilroy over to Watsonville, Monterey Bay and back up to Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. Due to the size of the Santa Cruz Mountains wine region it is often useful for our visitors to plan their trip by winery hours of operation, sub-regions or by urban winery locations.

Odonata

Description

Odonata Wines is a small family winery based here on the West side of Santa Cruz. We do our best to focus on local grapes that are organic and grown sustainably. We work closely with the growers to ensure the highest quality wines from the vines to the glass.

The credo I subscribe to is the blending of old world winemaking methods and attitudes with new learning and a continuous search for improvement.

My desire is to create wines that are soft, supple, and with subtle complexity. Inspired from the traditional French style, these wines are designed to be food friendly. They are balanced in fruit, acidity, alcohol, and wood, with flavors and aromas that are cohesive with a lengthy finish.

Odonata wines are made to be accessible now, but will also age beautifully. They will always be hand made in small batches to exemplify the unique qualities of the varietal and vineyard.

Enjoy!

Osocalis

Description

Osocalis is a small, artisanal distillery in Soquel, California. The name Osocalis is the original Native American name for Soquel, today part of the greater Santa Cruz area. We use a small (100 gallon) antique alambic Charentais still, imported from Cognac, to produce brandies using grapes and apples from the cooler coastal regions of California. We strive to produce products that have the length, elegance and finesse of Old World brandies, such as Cognac and Calvados, but with the fruit intensity and structure of California wines.

Founded in the early 1990′s, Osocalis represents the second generation of small American distillers to use the combination of Old World techniques with New World fruit. The first generation of artisan distillers in California, including Germain-Robin in Ukiah and RMS in Carneros, clearly demonstrated the intensity and richness that can be achieved from brandies derived from California fruit. California brandy makers have the advantage (and the challenge!) of being able to blend a large number of grape varieties together for a more complex and interesting product, whereas French law strictly limits this practice. At Osocalis, our brandy is based primarily on Colombard and Pinot Noir, though we also distill a wide array of wines such as Marsanne, Riesling, Syrah, Grenache, and Semillon. In fact, it is the art of blending these brandies from a variety of fruit sources which gives California brandies their very special style.